Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Led Zeppelin have launched a 50th anniversary video history series online.

Billed as “a series of short stories celebrating what happened 50 years ago”, the project’s first episode shares details of the recording on the band’s 1969 debut album.

The newly-formed band entered Olympic Studios in London in September of 1968 to capture music as presented in their live shows.

“The group had only been together two-and-a-half weeks when we recording it,” explains Jimmy Page, who brought in John Bonham, John Paul Jones and Robert Plant to tour as The New Yardbirds while wrapping up live commitments on behalf of his former band before entering the studio for sessions of new, original music. “We deliberately aimed at putting down what we could reproduce live on stage.”

“We did it in about 15 hours,” says Jones, “with another 15 for mixing, so it was 30 hours in all.”

Released in January 1969, the self-financed “Led Zeppelin I” introduced the group’s fusion of blues and hard rock while earning Top 10 status in their native UK, and the US, where it eventually went on to sell more than 8 million copies.